While its print sales and video streams continue to show marked drop-offs, Fairfax Media's digital properties continue to show growth in the embattled publisher’s June audience report, released today.
Sydney Morning Herald video streams saw a decline of 15% during June, while The Age's video streams saw a drop of 16%. May saw SMH video streams drop 24% and Age video steams fall 6%.
Print edition sales of both mastheads continue to decline, with SMH sales falling 13% on weekdays and 17% on Saturdays, and The Sun Herald dropping 23%. The Age has seen a 13% sales drop on weekdays and a 12% fall on Saturdays, while The Sunday Age sales have fallen by 15%. Readership figures saw similar declines.
“Most of the [print] decline was due to the continued effect of removing deeply discounted circulation, as previously reported,” Fairfax Media said in a statement.
Fairfax chief executive Jack Matthews said of the results: “We’re right on track for removing deeply discounted circ that was of no value to our advertisers. We make no apology for focusing on full price retail and long-term subscriptions.”
In contrast, the circulation numbers for Fairfax's digital editions have shown growth on May figures. The SMH digital editions have seen sales of 56,583 for the Monday-Friday editions during June, 56,218 on Saturdays and 56,230 on Sundays. The Age sold 26,216 digital editions Monday-Friday during June, 26,058 on Saturdays and 25,954 on Sundays.
Daily unique browsers viewing The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age via the mastheads' respective smartphone apps grew 568% and 583% respectively year-on-year.
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